With the U.K. sliding (quite unnecessarily, but seemingly inexorably) towards 1) the destructive absurdity of a ‘no deal’ Brexit, 2) a constitutional crisis, 3) a further slump in the battered pound, and 4) an early general election, the chances of a new government dominated by the hard-Left Labour Party are looking far more likely than polls currently suggest. Polls will not be that reliable a guide in the face of a contest when four parties, each with apparently sizable support, are participating in a first-past-the-post contest.
Under the circumstances, it was interesting to read this (via The Spectator) from John McDonnell, the man who would be Britain’s finance minister in the event of a Labour government, and who is, given his leader’s limited talents, probably the most powerful man in the party:
Dale asked about McDonnell’s family background and he remembered his mother who sold biscuits at a high street chain-store. ‘She was the best economist I ever met,’ he said, referring to her management of the family finances. Her message to her son was ‘Be kind’.
‘But you haven’t always been kind,’ said Dale. He cited a disputed video-clip in which McDonnell appears to encourage the lynching of Tory MP, Esther McVey. McDonnell hedged a little, suggesting that the context had been misunderstood. Dale moved on to a notorious McDonnell quote.
‘They [the Tories] are social criminals and one day, I warn you, we will try them.’
McDonnell shrugged. ‘I was angry. It was after the first round of benefit cuts.’
Dale pressed him. ‘But “try them”? Under what law?’
‘I might want to invent it,’ said McDonnell.
That couldn’t be clearer. An incoming Labour government will use the courts to prosecute and perhaps imprison Tory MPs for passing bills that Labour had failed to defeat while they were in opposition. That’s McDonnell’s less cuddly side.
I wrote about McDonnell a year or so ago here.
Perhaps it is worth noting this:
In 2016, the left-of-center New Statesman unearthed an interview McDonnell had given to, appropriately enough, the Trotskyist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty ten years before. Asked to name the “most significant” influences on his thought, McDonnell replied: “Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky, basically.”
Like Labour’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, McDonnell has long opposed the EU (if sometimes more discreetly than in the past), but the economic and political disruption that will follow a ‘no deal’ Brexit would, as the likely enabler of Labour success, be icing on his cake.
“The worse the better,” as someone McDonnell admires is said to have said.
The Conservatives appear to be eager to oblige.